Farewell to Order
Summary: A psychic and her kadabra reflect on whether the power was worth their sanity. The corruption of the mind, the price of redemption, and death. Rating for an unfortunate scene where we get to see the wrong end of mental backlash.
Author's note: For those of you familiar with my other work and wondering if I am on drugs, no I'm not. Just enjoying a severe case of writer's block on all my evo stories. This is an attempt to branch out, and hope that the drastic change will get my juices flowing again. This fanfic in no way follows the TV series, and happens before there is any traffic between Johto and Kanto. It is based off the game, and my own mad, imaginative wanderings. You can make connections to certain characters if you want, or you can just make it up in your minds. I've left that open for you to decide.
"Where were you?" she asks, her voice cold and harsh, just in case someone other than I can hear her.
That's my apprentice, and my mistress, afraid of what emotions could mean to her enemies. She does not think of them as enemies, she never uses the word "enemies" in her thoughts, but that is how she treats them.
Them? Other people. Other beings with thoughts and feelings. Fear and paranoia, the hallmarks of someone who never knows if what they are thinking are really their own thoughts.
She has learned well. Never trust the chaos raging around one's mind. Never. Trust is too dangerous for the load we bear. I hope that she can continue. She has concern and deep ties to me, which might make it harder. But I have taught her indifference and obedience only to The Duty.
"Where –," she starts to repeat her question.
There was a Farewell. An espeon succumbed to the chaos. He led a long and productive life, serving order, I tell her, the ritualistic words of the thoughts only telling half the story, as my mind weaves the tapestry of thought and emotion that is the real story.
I tell her of the espeon's life, in the way that she can understand what and who was lost to the chaos that we control. Only a psycic can understand this. The words provide structure, nothing more.
My human bends down to hug me, trying to put a mental shield against fear. I feel grateful, but know that it is useless. She is still not disciplined enough, and that fear is old, and strong. All psychics carry it, the more powerful we become the stronger the fear is.
"Katashee," she murmurs, "I am sorry, it must be so hard being reminded like that."
It is duty. The price we pay for power. The same thing happens to darklings, fire types; all pokemon must pay for what they gain. To be consumed by the power you wield is not the worst fate, I whisper comfortingly into her mind.
"But – to know in advance," she pauses, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of mortality. "It must be terrible."
It is no worse than the knowledge that you will weaken before you die. Pokemon go out in a blaze of glory, humans merely wither away.
A one sided smile appears on my muzzle. I admit that I have picked up some human facial expressions. A bad habit, an invitation to the chaos I must master, but sometimes a little chaos is not a bad thing. Forgive this old kadabra for such a blasphemous thought, but living with humans has let me see the truth of it.
"Yes, but we get a chance to live, at least! You said it yourself: a psychic is lucky if they are not insane after fifteen years, and they never live over twenty-five," her carefully schooled face did not display any emotion, but her tone of voice was rife with frustration, fear and concern.
That is the cost of changing chaos into order. Order eats our minds away. Our shields become too good, and lock us inside our minds, or we do without them, and become lost in the chaos of other thoughts and emotions. It is the way of things. We are given the control of the choas inside the mind, and it is our job to tame it, regulate it.
Without us, humans would become the warring creature that they once were. To have that kind of power over an entire race of people is too much for one person. We must die, so that we do not try to grab the power for ourselves. I hate repeating myself so often to you. You know what I mean. Stop fighting the fail safe. I'm not always going to be here to pull you back!
I try to calm down. I can't be afriad. Who will look after her once my time is up is not my problem, not now.
"No!" she is feeling stubborn right now, and believes that her arrogance can change the world. Humans are such wonderful creatures. "I won't let it. And I won't let you go, either. We are stronger –," she falters, looking pleadingly at me.
I stare back, luminous brown eyes boring into cold violet ones. I am quiet, it is for the best. She would argue with a response.
"I don't want to go insane again," she whispers. She feels the fear, too.
You will have a long life, by human standards. Your name will be known over the world. You will not be the greatest psychic, but your power will never be rivaled in your life time. At the Farewell the First Xatu told me. You have already paid your price in madness; your death will be quick.
"Your – Farewell – is going to be soon, isn't it?" She asks suspiciously.
I am twenty already.
I don't confirm or deny it. Yes, I am going to die – I just don't want to. I love my trainer. We have been through so much; our minds are one, now. I have changed her rage and hate into determination and strength.
She was fixing what she had destroyed – was it only four years ago? She could heal the sickness in human minds gone wrong. Not that she always did, but she would be great and powerful one day. Her mastery of telekinetics was unknown previously in humans, and there were only two telepaths who could rival her, mew and the dark clone.
The power had devoured her once. And I had brought her out again.
I remember what chaos looks like. The darkness had been shot through with lightning of brilliant greens, and sickly yellows. Violent orange had spilled across that velvety void like water on paper. Red fires had seared the back of my mental eyes. Sapphire blue tears had bitten me, as indigo snakes had attempted to rip me apart. They had wanted me to become one with everything, and for an instant I remember faltering.
Two years of torture and anguish for those around me and my mistress. How I reveled in the pain of those insects. They understood my true power, in the end. They had been prancing children, believing that the mastery of simple bugs and ghosts would let them win.
Even more hypocritical were those simpering psychics who believed that they could control more chaos than I could. I was Katashee with more power than they could hope to understand. I was order, and my mistress was the queen and ruler of chaos. I would never fail her.
Their antics amused me. Their golden city was falling, and they were foolish enough to try to kill my mistress, with a bullet. That bullet went through seven people before we were satisfied that our point had been made about what you do not do to telekinetics. We laughed at their pain, and suffering.
Then a new boy came, to challenge us in our hall of shadows. He had both telekinesis and telepathy, and other, lesser powers, like my mistress. He was not on her level, but he was not from our region, either, and his mind was, for the first time, not open to us.
No matter. I was sent out, calmly, and then he chose a pokemon that I had only heard of. Xatu. I contemptuously used confusion. I wanted to play with the bird before I went in for the kill.
The boy cried out for a shadow ball, as his bird sailed through the air to the wall with a resounding thud. I had no idea what a shadow ball was, nor did I particularly care. It could do nothing to me, I had survived nightshades before. But the pain of the ghostly energy bit into my mind as soon as the orb connected with my torso.
This was the other end of chaos. Kaos. The old, primal, original stuff. It reminded me of my duty to keep madness away. I was the guardian of thought, as my mistress was supposed to have been.
I lashed out, angry, scared, alone. My mistress was shielded, the boy from the mysterious region was not.
He caught the brunt of my fear, and loathing. He screamed, a high pitched keening sound. His hands reached up, the clean carefully manicured nails my focal point, as I and his Xatu stared in horror. He tried to claw his face off.
We stopped him, I, and his Xatu, but there is horrible scarring there, one eye is missing, even, and he wears a mask to this day.
My mistress was chuckling, thinking that I had meant to do that to him. She sounded like a demon, I realized. Deadly, and vicious, power crackled out of her very words. For the first time I thought she was an abomination.
The boy was curled on the floor in a fetal position. Red blood was falling onto the marble tiles. It matched the shade of his unkempt long hair which was shading his face, where his own nails had marred what once might have been handsome.
"Well, well. That should teach you not to surprise my Katashee. What was that attack your – bird used? I've never seen it before, and Katashee hasn't been able to identify it. It does have power, you've broken our link."
She was in some oblique way congratulating him. Saying that she was impressed. She would still order me to turn his mind inside out, the punishment for challenging her and failing, but she had been impressed. It was the first time in a long time.
He was slowly getting to his knees. The right side of his face was a gory mess, but the left side held the determination of someone who put his mind above pain. Not even my mistress was as good at that particular technique. It required a degree of control that she did not have.
"It's called shadow ball. It's a powerful ghost type attack where I come from," his voice was steady, but seemed fragile, at the point of breaking into screams of agony.
"And where do you come from, psychic?" my mistress asked, sitting straighter in her throne-like chair, and uncrossing her long legs.
"Johto, it's to the west," he said with great effort.
She laughed, a light sound, out of place in this morbid scene.
"Your attempts to get into my kadabra's mind are tickling me, Johtoan. Katashee may only just have evolved, but he is no novice. I do give you credit, though, for realizing that his is the weak point. But even with the direct link gone, we still share shields."
He smiled, crookedly, and the rubble which had accumulated after hundreds of battles in this ancient hall shot at my mistress's head, at the same time as I let him into my mind. My mistress was distracted, deflecting the stones and wooden beams, allowing him and me to gain entrance into her mind and imprison her powers.
His xatu pulled the rocks away as her telekinesis failed. After that he left. Rather, his xatu took him away. The bird left me to deal with my mistress, and bring her out of the darkness. I have been her compass.
I have guided her faithfully and well for four years, and for seven before that, including the two years of chaos and power. I was old before I was captured. I had not bothered with evolution, because I was scared of my powers eating me, the way they do when we age.
I could become worse than what I was then. Then I was at the height of my power, I was insane, but I was in control. Now I am losing that control. People's thoughts fly through my shields. I feel myself sinking back into the chaos, wanting to kill them all, or worse, connect all their minds, so they feel the pain and suffering that I do.
My Farewell is now, Mistress, I tell her, suddenly.
The warm sunshine streaming down on the grassy place outside this city's gym makes everything seem softer, somehow. I have never liked the dark.
I see her start, consternation and pain written in her features, as I teleport away, never to come out the other side. Here, in this void between places, I can freely open my mind to the chaos of thought and feeling. My mind will become part of the power which psychics draw on to attack. As it should be.